Being social for your business means you look at your customers like a cohesive group of people you help. As an individual business owner, you equip your community with tools that support that community’s activities. Those tools are your products/services that help your target market community improve productivity or life generally.

Being Social Is NOT Selling

Think of your target market like friends (because they really are.) You are social with them because you love them and want life to be better for them. Being social with them, you think like them. You understand the problems or challenges they have and want things to be better for them.

Because you think like them, relate to their struggles, and generally understand what really matters to them, you could consider yourself as a comfort for them. Intuitively, we all realize there is strength in numbers. When we’re stressed out, we feel comforted surrounding ourselves with others who can relate to what is causing that stress.

Look at posts in Facebook. When somebody posts content about a current struggle, they look for comfort from the friendly company of others who also understand their pain in the Facebook group. When we are being social, we are also uniting against external foes, challenges, life puzzles, tests that seem to be breaking us. In short, being social means engaging with empathy and caring.

Being Social Is Engaging Because You Genuinely Care For Your Customers

When you know what really matters to your target market and commercial community you support, give something meaningful (especially time) that helps that community. It gives you a great sense of accomplishment for yourself and shows you to be a genuine person.

For example, suppose a health food store serves your local community. Notice the word I’ve used here – serves. You are in business to serve your customers. In our example, if people are interested in their health, they will appreciate and buy from a local health food and supplement store.

So, as another local business person, what might you do to show that you support the health food store being in your community? Think “joint venture.” Do something that helps the store stay in business. When you help the store stay in business, you also support the community and your own business. This same concept can be applied online as well as locally.

In keeping with this idea of being social with a local business, suppose you suggest a joint venture event for the health food store. Together, you could share advertising and/promotional costs for a special event that provides community education while helping keep the store in business.

You could get local experts to come into the store and share valuable health information the health enthusiasts would appreciate. There are so many ways to think of that apply to being social. The more social you are in your business, the more you are seen online (and locally) as a caring business. The more you see and practice being social, the more you succeed in your business!